1) The McCarthy Debt Ceiling Bill Would Increase Stocks/Wealth by $2.7 Trillion
Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet this week to “not negotiate” on the debt ceiling – which Biden’s own Treasury Department warns will require action by June 1 before the government loses its legal right to borrow more money. Biden is sticking with his hissy-fit position that he won’t make any deal to bring down government spending as any part of a debt ceiling extension.
But what if Biden temporarily put aside his far leftwing agenda, came to his senses, and did agree to the McCarthy plan that raises the debt ceiling in exchange for spending caps and other reforms that would reduce the debt by some $4.5 trillion over the next decade, reinstate work requirements for welfare programs, cap spending at one percent and increases American domestic oil and gas production.
A new stock market analysis by Jeff Yass of Susqunana Capital and David McIntosh of Club for Growth estimates $2.7 trillion in wealth in the marketplace. All the president has to do is put partisanship aside and say OK to very good legislation.
That $2.7 trillion includes avoiding a hit of about $900 billion in temporary losses from a debt ceiling breach and a huge boom from the bill's pro-growth reforms.
This seems to us an economic and political no-brainer for Biden, so he probably won’t go for it.
2) Is North Carolina the Next Red State Powerhouse?
The first giant red state magnet was Texas. Then a few years ago Florida became America’s number one destination state. But the recent Census and IRS data find that the Tar Heel State is coming on strong. We doubt that Carolina will supplant Florida or Texas anytime soon, but the state has turned redder over time and it is now a top-five destination state. See the analysis below from our friends at Carolina Journal.
North Carolina is not currently a RED trifecta state – GOP Governor, Senate, and House – but it’s highly likely that next year Republicans will win the governorship and it will then be all red. Then it will be time to abolish the state’s income tax.
3) Chile's Free Market Model May Be on the Comeback
Ever since the Chileans voted into the presidency leftist/communist Gabriel Boric in 2021, we’ve been despondent about Chile’s stroll back down the road to tyranny. Since the 1980s, Chile had become the jewel of South America thanks to private property rights, privatization, lower tax rates, and other free-market reforms. These reforms led to a tripling in Chile’s per capita income over thirty years, yet Boric promised to reverse course.
Thankfully, this week Chileans went to the polls and delivered Boric a big setback in the pursuit of the young leader’s progressive agenda. Right-wing candidates won a clear majority of seats on the Constitutional Council in charge of drafting a new charter.” The Left is despondent.
We’re ecstatic. There is hope for Chile after all.
In short, the EPA assumes something it knows to be false, namely that emissions from producing electricity to power EVs are zero. I’m tempted to call this the EPA’s “non-smoking gun.”
How could the EPA justify such an extreme assumption? On the same page, it attempts to do so, writing, “The program has now been in place for a decade, since MY 2012, with no upstream accounting and has functioned as intended, encouraging the continued development and introduction of electric vehicle technology.”
Did you catch that? The EPA justifies its explicit bias against gasoline-powered vehicles and in favor of EVs by arguing that doing so will encourage the continued development of EVs. Well, yes, just as ignoring the cost of anything will justify more of that thing. Call it the EPA’s new frontier in cost/benefit analysis. Or maybe call it the Bart Simpson justification: “I only lied because it was the easiest way to get what I wanted.”
This one is particularly crazy because the federal government has already made dishwashers take twice as long to clean, rinse and dry… and not clean as well as they used to.
Our guess is that the Biden Administration will next call for the ultimate zero carbon emission dishwasher: mom with a dish rag and towel.
